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The impact of social engineering
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There is a lot of controversy when it comes to understanding social engineering. Its Mere definition sparks various arguments amongst renowned scholars. “It is basically the act of manipulating a person to do something that may or may not be for the person’s best interest “(Social, 2010).It involves making a person to do certain actions, and acquiring information from the person. It might seem like a deceptive way of doing things, but it is what everyone does in their daily lives like an innocent child trying to get candy from their parents, or someone on a campaign trail seeking votes. Its level of complexity and wide scope of use makes it a science. Just like any other type of science, social engineering can be used in almost all kinds of …show more content…
It usually takes longer than other methods because the engineers need accurate information so as to fully convince their targets. An example, an engineer using this method may pretend to represent your bank, and then give a few details about your account, and then will tell you there is a technical hitch and your account has been disabled so he needs your pin so as to activate your account. This technique requires a lot of effort and research to appear legitimate to the …show more content…
Reverse social engineering is smart method where one tricks the victim by creating a platform to be asked questions instead of questioning the victims. In this type of social engineering, the engineers create an impression of being in a particular field of expertise or having certain authority, and they use the trust they have won from their victims.
The use of spamming and fake anti spyware is fully dependent on the internet and cannot be carried out in without it since the engineering happens online. Spamming involves receiving deceptive mail like one has won the lottery then engineers ask for information to receive payment so as to gain financially or for social gains. For fake spyware, they claim to have utilities that are anti-spyware but are actually the spyware that can hack into your system. The engineers in this case pretend to be genuine and are out to offer solutions.
Protecting individuals from social
The data breach at Target may have been less brute force than a casual observer might imagine, given the language used on Target’s own FAQ which describes the incident as “criminals forc[ing] their way into our system.”1 While this description might conjure an image of hackers sitting in a dimly lit room, running complex software on super powered machines, and attempting a brute force or DDoS style attack to gain access to customer information databases, the reality appears to have been slightly less glamorous. There can be a variety of unintended entries to a secure system, and criminals will go for the weakest link in the chain. This weak link may oftentimes be not a security hole in the software, but instead the users of that software. The term hacking is used as a catch-all for situations where an information system has been compromised, even though the actual attack or breach of security was nothing more than information leaking out from users or corporations not thoroughly versed in good security practices. In these cases, the breaches are more appropriately described as being a result of social engineering. Social engineering is the technique of combining technological and psychological savvy to obtain illegal access to information2. This can involve anything from complaining and pleading with a phone support representative to give out information, to just realizing that many people use the same password for most of their accounts. Phishing is a social engineering tactic where an attractive, familiar, or official looking email is sent out to multiple recipients with the intent of tricking them into clicking a malicious link or downloading malware attachments3,4. While the latter approach may feel more like hacking, because ...
Social psychology centres on a subject or person who has universal characteristics which can be studied independently of the social context.
Security helps the organization meet its business objectives or mission by protecting its physical and financial resources, reputation, legal position, employees, and other tangible and intangible assets through the selection and application of appropriate safeguards. Businesses should establish roles and responsibilities of all personnel and staff members. However, a Chief Information Officer should be appointed to direct an organization’s day to day management of information assets. Supporting roles are performed by the service providers and include systems operations, whose personnel design and operate the computer systems. Each team member must be held accountable in ensuring all of the rules and policies are being followed, as well as, understanding their roles, responsibilities and functions. Organizations information processing systems are vulnerable to many threats that can inflict various types of damage that can result in significant losses (Harris, 2014). Losses can come from actions from trusted employees that defraud the system, outside hackers, or from careless data entry. The major threat to information protection is error and omissions that data entry personnel, users, system operators and programmers make. To better protect business information resources, organizations should conduct a risk analysis to see what
From this specialization, generalizes the concept that social engineering can be a technique or method to achieve a variety of results, i.e., ceases to be an instrument to solve social problems and turns into one to manipulate the population. It is clear at this point that propaganda can be considered social engineering, as well as the political campaigns and the religion, since they seek to achieve a specific behavior in the masses. In 1945, Karl Popper reintroduced the term with the meaning of critical and rational methods of engineering and science to social problems.
ABSTRACT : This paper describes the basic threats to the network security and the basic issues of interest in designing a secure network. it describes the important aspects of network security. A secure network is one which is free of unauthorized entries and hackers. INTRODUCTION
Outcome Engineering Manipulation is used in nearly every endeavor encountered throughout an average day. Things ranging from day to day commercials all the way to political campaigns are using concealed techniques of manipulation influencing the everyday actions of the public. Leaving any person with access to the world, vulnerable to manipulation. The Webster dictionary defines manipulation as, “to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means, especially to one’s own advantage”. Meaning that anyone can become skilled in the art of manipulation, even children.
Social psychology is all about influence. It’s the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by other people. Social psychologists study social influence by different means of research methods - the observational method, correlational method, and experimental method. These methods are crucial for researchers because they each serve a different purpose, and differ in validity. Each method holds strengths and weakness and is used to explore different areas of behaviors.
There are countless stories of companies falling victim to sophisticated social engineering attacks by some of the best cybercriminals. The war against companies and cyberspace marches on. It is important for organizations to understand what social engineering is, the various types of social engineering attacks, the reason for
The definition of hacking has undergone some changes in the past few years. At first it identified people “who enjoys modifying and subverting system, whether technological bureaucratic or sociological.” (Lemos, 2002) In the last decade hacking has evolved to describe “those people with a hands-on interest in computer security and circumventing such security. (lemos 2002) As you explore deeper into the digital landscape it becomes clearer that these hackers are sub divided into three groups of intermingling individuals classified by a system of hats.
Principle of Security Management by Brian R. Johnson, Published by Prentice-Hall copyright 2005 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Social Engineering: What It Is and How to Help Protect Yourself. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.microsoft.com/security/resources/socialengineering-whatis.aspx
We will base our testing for social engineering vulnerability on the inoculation training framework. Our goal will be to determine how familiar everyone are with all the different types of social engineering threats that they might face. These tests will be structured to address the roll of each associate in our company. The theory is based on the fact that if our employees are constantly facing these attacks, they will eventually become immune to them. So, using the inoculation theory as our testing framework will reap great rewards (Tipton & Krause, 2007).
Every day, citizens are constantly losing money and being victimized due to these fraudulent activities. Cyber crime, including fraud, identity theft, stalking, and hacking, is a growing problem that can be prevented by taking the proper precautions. The biggest cases of cyber crimes are cases of fraud. Online fraud comes in many forms. It ranges from viruses that attack computers with the goal of retrieving personal information, to email schemes that lure victims into wiring money to fraudulent sources” (What is “online fraud”).
Millions of people around the world use computers and the internet every day. We all use it in school, work even at home, computers have made us life easier, it has brought so many benefits to the society but it has also brought some problems and cybercrimes is one of them. “The times have really changed,” said Greg Garcia, the department’s assistant secretary for cyber security and communications. “We’re seeing now phishing, farming, botnets … war dialing and domain server spoofing. And we’re seeing coordinated cyber-attacks against nation states.” (Fowler 5) Cybercrime is one of the most prevalent and most popular rising crimes being committed today. This is criminal activity done using computers and the Internet. There are millions victims around the world everyday who face these problems. Most people become victims of these at one time or another, but there are ways to avoid or deal with cybercrime by protecting yourself appropriately. I also was one of those victims who faced a similar problem. This unfortunate truth forces me to understand that computers and the Internet have made our lives easier in many ways. However, it is unfortunate that people also use these technologies to take advantage of others through identity theft, hacking attempts, and malicious use of software.
Some examples of social engineering include phishing, spear phishing, and hoaxes. Phishing is where a victim receives messages that may or may not look real from actual business places. These messages ask victims to authenticate and give up sensitive information. Most people who fall for these tactics believed that the website or message was real. Spear Phishing targets a specific victim. Hoaxes are just ways to make the victim feel dumb that they fell for the trap. Lastly, we have spam, which is unsolicited commercial emails. Now a days filters have blocked a good amount of these emails because they are just annoying to deal with but spam has become the common transport for viruses, worms, trojans, and many other forms of